1. Copyright Notice
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by any one of the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patents files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
2. Field of Invention
The invention relates to the field of human machine interfaces. In particular, one embodiment of the invention relates to an interface for tracking objects using a computer system.
3. Description of Related Art
Computer tracking systems allow users to track a target object using a computer system. The computer system connects to a video camera that captures images (note that the images from video cameras are also referred to as frames). The computer system searches the images and attempts to identify the location of the target object within the images. The computer system then transmits camera control instructions to the video camera to cause the video camera to track the movement of the target object. One such system is available from Sony Corporation. One aspect of a computer tracking system is the user interface. The user interface, also referred to as the graphical user interface (GUI) or the human machine interface, allows the user to interact with the computer tracking system. For example, in the Sony system, the images from the video camera are displayed on a monitor connected to the video camera. The video camera includes a computer which executes a tracking application. By interacting with the tracking application's graphical user interface, the user can select the an image of the object to be tracked. (The object to be tracked is also referred to as the target object, or target.)
One problem with present graphical user interfaces occurs in computer tracking systems that can track one of many target objects. In such systems, it is somewhat difficult for the user to select which target to track at any given time. In some previous systems, each target is identified by a name, number, or combination of both. However, where the target's name or identity is unknown or unfamiliar to the user, the user may find it difficult to associate the different labels with the target to be tracked.
Therefore, what is desired is a computer tracking system having a more intuitive user interface which may be used with video conferencing systems.